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l?rice lO Oents. 



THE u:^ioi^r 



AN ADDRESS 



BY THE 



HON. DANIEL S. DICKINSON, 



DELIVERED BEFORE THI 



LITERARY SOCIETIES OF AMHERST COLLEGE, 



July lOth, 1861. 




^^W-iSH^^^"^- 



NEW YORK: 

(successor to W. a. T<nv>-SEND & CO.,) 

46 WALKEH STliKET. 
1861. 



PROSPECTUS. 



ELEGANT HOUSEHOLD EDITION 



Works of Charles Dickens, 

Illustrated from Drawings made expressly for this Edition, 

By F. O. C. Darley and John Gilbert. 

Executed on Steel, in Pure Line and Etching, by Eminent Engravers. 



The subscriber will commence, March 1st, 1861, the issue of 
an entirely new edition of Dickens' Nov^els, from new stereotype 
plates, printed by Houghton, at the '* Riverside Press," Cambridge, 
on superior laid paper, in style and form similar to Ticknor 8c Fields* 
popular Household Edition of the Waverley Novels. Great 
pains have been taken by the publisher to render this edition of 
Dickens' Works the most perfect series of books ever issued in Ameri- 
ca. The original drawings by Darley, whose designs for the Ilhis- 
trated Edition of Cooper's Novels have been so distinguished, snd 
the drawings by John Gilbert, the foremost of English artists (this 
being the first time Mr. Gilbert has contributed original drawings to 
an American publication), will give this edition a value possessed by 
no other, either English or American. 

THE PUBLICATION WILL COMMENCE WITH 

PICKWICK PAPERS, 

IN FOUR volumes, 1 6mo. Price 75 cents per volume. 

It is the intention of the Publisher to issue a complete novel in 
two or more volumes on the first of each m.onth, and to complete the 
series in 50 volumes. 

JAMES G. GREGORY, Publisher, 

(Successor to W. A. Townsend & Co.,) 

NO. 46 WALKER STREET, N. Y. 



THE UNION. 



We are admonished by "the divinity that stirs within us," as well 
as by all history and experience in human aifairs, that there are prin- 
ciples which can never be subverted, truths which never die. The 
religion of a Saviour, who, at his nativity, was cradled on the straw 
pallet of destitution, who in declaring and enforcing his divine mission 
was sustained by obscure fishermen, who was spit upon by the rabble, 
persecuted by power, and betrayed by treachery to envy, has by its 
inherent forces subdued, civilized, and conquered a world ; not by the 
tramp of hostile armies, the roar of artillery, or the stirring airs of 
martial music, but by the swell of the same heavenly harmonies which 
aroused the drowsy shepherds at the rock-founded city of Bethlehem, 
proclaiming in their dulcet warblings, peace on earth and good will 
toward men ; not by flashes of contending steel, amidst the bad pas- 
sions of the battle-field, the shrieks of the dying, and the flames of 
subjugated cities, but by the glowing light which shot athwart the 
firmament, and illumined the whole heavens at his advent. Thus was 
ushered in that memorable epoch in the world's eventful history, the 
Christian era — an era wnich closed one volume in tlie record of man's 
existence, and opened another— which drew aside the dark curtain of 
death and degradation, exhibiting to fife's worn and weary pilgrim 
along the wastes of ignorance and barbarism, new domains of hope 
and happiness for exploration and improvement, new fields for him to 
subdue and fertilize and reap, and new triumphs for him to achieve in 
the cause of human regeneration. And let him who fails to estimate 
the priceless value of this divine reformation in a temporal sense alone, 
contrast the condition of man wherever Christian civilization Las 
travelled, with a people groping amidst the degrading darkness of 
idolatry, or bowing beneath some imposture still more heaven-dariug 
and impious. 

Second only in interest and importance to the religion of Him who 
spake as never man spake, is that system of political truth which pro- 
1 



2 THE U NI O N. 

claims the doctrine of man's equality, and elevates liira in the scale^ 
of being, to that dignity of station which heaven destined him to fill. 
For untold centuries, despotism and kingcraft had asserted dominion 
over the world's masses. Every attempt to break the fetters which 
held a people in vassalage had resulted in riveting them more securely 
upon the limbs of servitude. Labor had groaned under the exactions, 
and the spirit had prayed long and fervently for deliverance, but in 
vain. The failure of every effort to correct an organization so false 
and vicious, and cruel, and restore the power swayed by the tyrannic 
few to the plundered many, had been written in human blood, until 

" Hope, for a season, bade the world farewell." 

But our fathers, imbued with the spirit ot liberty, which a fi'ee^ 
resph-ation of the air of the new world inspired, and goaded to des-^i 
peration by the exactions of oppression, rolled the stone from the 
dooi of the sepulchre, where crucified and entombed liberty was^ 
slumbering, and it arose to light and life, to cheer, and bless, and give ' 
hope to the down-trodden humanity of earth ; to emancipate the im- ! 
mortal mind from the slavery by which it was degraded. They | 
asserted the simplest yet sublimest of political truths, that all men 
were created equal. They arraigned at the bar of a Christian world, 
trembling, tyrannous, stultified legitimacy, while asserting its impious 
dogma of heaven-descended rulers, and they repudiated and laughed 
to scorn the fraudulent theories, base pretensions and vain ceremonials 
of its political hierarcliy. They declared in the broadest sense the 
right of man's self-government, and his capacity for its exercise, and 
sought release from a proud and haughty monarchy, that they might 
enjoy upon this continent a nation's independence, and found a system 
which recognized the equality of men, in which their theories were 
established. They trusted the future of their "lives, their fortunes 
and their sacred honor," to the chances of a great experiment, and 
while the timid faltered, the treacherous betrayed, the mercenary 
moaned, and the unbelieving derided, far-seeing patriotism pressed 
forward with an eye of faith, upon its mission of progress, until hope 
gave place to fruition ; until expectation became success, until the 
most formidable power of earth learned the salutary lesson that a 
proud nation, mighty in armed men, and strong in the terrible ma- 
terial of war by sea and by land, could not conquer the everlasting 
truth. The experiment, so full of promise and yet so threatened with 
dangers, became an accomplished fact. Like a grain of mustard- 
seed, sown in a subdued faith, it shot upward, and became an over- 
shadowing tree, so wide-spread and luxuriant, that the birds of the 



THEUNION. 3 

air could rest in its branches. Would that none of- the evil omen had 
ever taken refuge there ! Thus vras planted the germ of liberty in 
this holy land of freedom. It was nurtured in the warm heart's 
blood of patriots, and watered by the tears of widows and of orphans ; 
but for a time it was tremulous and slender, and like a frail reed it 
bowed before every breeze. Oh, what invocations ascended to Him 
" who tempers the wind to the shorn lamb," for that cherished shoot, 
that the " winds of heaven might not visit it too roughly.'' "With the 
fathers of revolution, it was remembered at the morning and evening 
sacrifice. " When its leaves withered they mourned, and when it re- 
joiced, they rejoiced with it," But those who planted it, and watched 
over its spring-time with more than a father's solicitude, have gone up 
to loftier courts, and repose under the fadeless foliage of the tree of life. 
The gray -haired minister who craved for it God's blessings, has been 
wafted away like the prophet of old, in a chariot of fire, and the children 
who sported together on the grass beneath it, now slumber with their 
fathers. The last revolutionary soldier who rejoiced in its pride, and 
told with tears its early trials, " shouldered his crutch, and showed 
how fields were won," has been mustered into the service of his Lord 
and Master, where the tramp of cavalry, and the shock of armies, the 
neighing of chargers, and the blast of bugles, shall be heard no more. 
But the slender shoot of other times has become a giant in the world's 
extended forest. Its roots have sunk down deep in earth, its top has 
stretched beyond the clouds, and its branches have spanned the conti- 
nent. Its form is graceful, its foliage is bright and beautiful, and its 
fruits have carried gladness to every quarter of the globe. The op- 
pressed of other lands, finding, like the wearied dove, no rest amid the 
old world's desolation, have conquered the holiest instincts of the 
soul, the love of early home, of the birth-place, of the streams of 
childhood, or the graves of their beloved dead, and have sought a 
gathering place of affection under its protecting branches. Here they 
have reposed in peace and plenty, and fancied security, from the strug- 
gles which cursed their native land. No groans of oppression are 
heard beneath it, no deadly malaria sickens in its shade, but its shel- 
tering influences, refreshing as the dews, and genial as the sunshine, 
have blessed and cherished all. 

Ah! what government has so protected its children, so ennobled 
man, so elevated woman, so inspired youth, so given hope and promise 
to budding childhood, so smoothed the descent of dreary age; has so 
guarded the freedom of conscience, so diffused intelligence, so Ifostered 
letters and the arts, so secured to all " life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
happiness?" The triumphs of freedom, moral and material, under this 



4 THEDNION. 

new dispensation, , have excelled the hope of the most sanguine. From 
three, our population has increased to thirty millions ; from thirteen 
feeble colonies along the Atlantic slope, to thirty-four powerful States, 
with numerous others in the process of formation, and on their way 
for admittance to the Union. Two strong European powers have 
withdrawn from the continent, leaving us the fruits of their posses- 
sions. Great and prosperous states, and cities and towns, teeming 
with the elements of enterprise and social culture, and abounding with 
institutions of religion and learning, have arisen as if by magic, on the 
far distant Pacific, where we liave only paused, lest to cross it might 
put us on our return voyage, and bring us nearer home ; and the river 
which the ambition of our early history essayed to fix for our western 
limit, now runs nearest our eastern boundary. Numerous aboriginal 
nations have been displaced before the prevailing current of our arts 
and arms and free principles, and whoever listens may hear the pat- 
tering feet of coming millions; and whoever will look back upon the 
past and forward upon the future, must see that there are further 
races for us to civilize, educate and absorb, and that new triumphs 
await us in the cause of progress and civilization. Thus have we 
passed from infancy to childhood, from childhood to robust and buoy- 
ant youth, and from youth to vigorous manhood ; and with an over- 
growth so superabundant, we should neither be surprised nor alarm- 
ed that we have provoked foreign envy as well as unwilling admira- 
tion — that cankers of discontent are gnawing at our heartstrings, and 
that we are threatened with checks, and trials and reverses. 

The continent of North America presents to tlie observing mind one 
great geographical system, every portion of which, under the present 
facilities for intercommunication, may be more accessible to every 
other than were the original States to each other at the time the Con- 
federacy was formed. It is destined at no distant day to become 
permanently the commercial centre, when France and England will 
pay tribute to New York, and the Rothschilds and the Barings will sell 
exchange on Wall Street at a premium ; and it requires no romantic 
stretch of the imagination to believe that the time is at hand when 
man, regarding his own wants, yielding to his own impulses, and act- 
ing in obedience to laws more potent than the laws of a blind ambition, 
will ordain that the continent shall be united in political as well as nat- 
ural bonds, and form but one great Union — a free, self-governed, Con- 
federated Republic, exhibiting to an admiring world the results which 
have been achieved for man's freedom and elevation in this western 
hemisphere. 

In ordinary times, a correct taste would suggest that, upon occasions 



THE UNI ON. 5 

like the present, all subjects of political concern, however measured 
by moderation, and seasoned with philosophy and historic truth, should 
be left for discussion to some appropriate forum, and those only con- 
sidered which are more in sympathy with the objects of the societies 
of Amherst ; but when the glorious edifice which protects and shel- 
ters all is threatened with the fate of the Ephesian dome, the patriotic 
scholar, before he sits down to his favorite banquet, will raise his voice 
and nerve his arm, to aid in extinguishing the flames, that he may pre- 
serve to posterity institutions without which all the learning of the 
schools would be but mockery, and give place to violence, and igno- 
rance, and barbarism. This is emphatically a utilitarian and practical 
age, and when the foundations upon which the ark of our political 
safety rest are threatened, rebellion is wafted on every breeze, and the 
rude din of arms greets* us on either hand, menacing our very exist- 
ence as a great and prosperous people, letters may sympathize with 
the danger, and become silent in our midst as well as laws. 

Bad government is the enemy of knowledge. Under its destructive 
reign learning is neglected, ignorance is honored and commended, and 
free opinion is persecuted as an enemy of State. Its schools are mili- 
tary despotisms, and the dungeon, the rack, and the gibbet are its 
teachers. Under its haughty sway the energies of mind are bowed 
and broken, the spirit subdued and restrained in its search for suste- 
nance, and literature and the sciences droop, languish and die. This 
glorious Union is our world; while we maintain its integrity, all the 
nations of the earth, the lofty and the low, must recognize our supre- 
macy, and pay us homage ; disjointed, forming two or more fragmen- 
tary Republics, we shall deserve and receive less consideration than the 
States of Barbary ; and now that we are threatened with destruction, 
let us as one people, from the North and the South, the East and the 
West, rising above the narrow instincts of parties and associations, 
relume our lamps of liberty, as the vestals replenished their sacred 
fire, though not extinguished, from the rays of the morning sun. Let 
US renew our covenant, and swear upon the holy altars of our faith to 
maintain and defend it and its glorious emblem, the stars and stripes, 
so replete with pleasing memories ; and if there are any who distrust 
their own firmness, and fear they may be seduced or may fall out by 
the wayside, or be frightened from their purpose, let them, like Her- 
nando Cortez, burn the means of retreat behind them, that they may 
«; remain faithful to the end. 

When the sunlight of the last Autumn was supplanted by the pre- 
monitions of Winter, by drifting clouds and eddying leaves, and the 
flight of birds to a milder clime, our land was emphatically blessed. 



6 THEUNION. 

We were at peace with all the powers of the earth, and enjoying un- 
disturbed domestic repose. A beneficent Providence had smiled upon 
the labors of the husbandman, and our granaries groaned under the 
burden of their golden treasures. Industry found labor and compen- 
sation, and the poor man's latch was never raised except in the sacred 
name of friendship, or by the authority of law. No taxation consu- 
med, no destitution appalled, no sickness wasted, but health and joy 
beamed from every face. The fruits of toil, from the North and the 
South, the East and the West, were bringing to our feet the contribu- 
tions of the earth, and trade, which for a time had fallen back to re- 
cover breath from previous over-exertion, had resumed her place 
" where merchants most do congregate." The land was replete with 
gladness, and vocal with thanksgivings of its sons and daughters, upon 
the vast prairies of the West, up its sunny hill-slopes, and through its 
smiling valleys, along its majestic rivers, and down its meandering 
streamlets, and its institutions of religion, and learning, and charity, 
echoed back the sound : 

" But, bringing np the rear of this bright host, 
A spirit of a different aspect waved 
His wings, like thunder-clouds above some coast, 
Whose barren beach with frequent Avi-ecks is paved. 
His brow was like the deep, when tempest-tossed ; 
Fierce and unfathomable thoughts engraved 
Eternal wrath on his immortal face, 
And where he gazed, a gloom pervaded space." 

Yes, in the moment of our country's triumph, in the plenitude of its 
pride, in the heyday of its hope, and in the fulness of its beauty, the 
serpent which crawled into Eden, and whispered his glozing story of 
delusion to the unsuspecting victim of his guile, unable to rise from 
the original curse which rests upon him, sought to coil his snaky folds 
around it, and sting it to the heart. From the arts and the enjoy- 
ments of peace we have been plunged deep in the horrors of civil 
war. Our once happy land resounds with the clangor of rebellious 
arms, and is polluted with the dead bodies of its children, some seek- 
ing to destroy, some struggling to maintain, the common beneficent 
Government of all, as established by our fathers. This effort to di- 
vide the Union and subvert the Government, whatever may be the 
pretence, is, in fact, a daring and dangerous crusade against free insti- 
tutions. It should be opposed by the whole power of a patriotic peo- 
ple, and crushed beyond the prospect of a resurrection ; and to attain 
that end, the Government should be sustained in every just and rea- 
sonable eff'ort to maintain the authority and integrity of the nation ; 
to uphold and vindicate the supremacy of the. Constitution and the 



THE UNION. 7 

majesty of the laws, by all lawful means ; not grudgingly sustained, 
with one hesitating, shuffling, unwilling step forward, to save appear- 
ance, and two stealthy ones backward to secure a seasonable retreat; 
nor with the shallow craft of a mercenary politician, calculating chan- 
ces and balancing between expedients, but with the generous alacrity 
and energy which have a meaning, and prove a loyal, patriotic, and 
willing heart. It is not a question of Administration, but of a Gov- 
ernment — not of politics, but of patriotism — not of policy, but of 
principles which uphold us all — a question too great for party — be- 
tween the Constitution and the laws on one hand and misrule and 
anarchy on the other — between existence and destruction. 

The Union was formed under the Constitution by an association of 
equals ; like the temple of Diana, every pillai which upholds its arches 
was the gift of a sovereign ; not a sovereign created by man's usurpa- 
tion, and serving upon gala-days to exhibit to plundered subjects the 
diadems, and diamonds, and gorgeous trappings of royalty, but of a 
sovereign people, created in the image of their Maker, and bearing in 
their bosoms the crown jewels of immortality. In the administration 
of its government, and in the relation of its members with each other, 
each and every one is entitled to complete equality ; the right to enjoy 
unmolested all the privileges of the compact, in their full length and 
breadth, in letter and in spirit. 

Whenever and wherever there has been a departure from this plain 
and just stipulation, in theory or in practice, in either section, or 
where either lias employed means or agencies calculated to disturb or 
irritate, or annoy the other, there has been error and cause of griev- 
ance which demanded redress and restitution ; and when rebellion has 
sheathed its sword, and lowered its front, and the obligations of the 
Constitution are a^ain recognized by all who owe it obedience, may 
every true friend of the Constitution and Union unite in a common 
purpose and an earnest effort, in seeing that there remains no just 
cause of complaint unredressed in any portion of the confederacy. 
But there has been no grievance alleged, which, if true, could justify 
armed rebellion and disunion. The Constitution, with defects and 
imperfections from which human creations are inseparable, bears upon 
its bosom remedies for every abuse which is practised in its name, and 
power to punish every violation of its salutary provisions ; and those 
who are unable to ''bear the ills they have," should invoke its spirit, 
rather than "fly to others which they know not of." And the Gov- 
ernment, though it has by no means been exempt from mal-adminis- 
tration throughout its eventful history, has been less arraigned for in- 
justice than any government on earth. And time and patience, and a 



8 THEUNION. 

sense of popular justice, the ebbs and flows and currents of opinion, 
would have proved a corrective of all serious causes of disturbance. 
But efforts to divide the Union and destroy the Government, beside 
jbeing intrinsically atrocious, instead of correcting the alleged griev- 
jances, are calculated to aggravate them more than a hundredfold, and, 
if successful, to close a day of humanities, hope and promise, in this 
refuge of liberty, in blood and darkness. No one denies to an op- 
pressed people the right of revolution, as the last dreadful resort of 
man seeking emancipation, when all other efforts have proved una- 
vailing — never to be entered upon except as a terrific necessity. But 
Secession is a bold and bald and wicked imposture, with its authors — 
a chimera, an illusion and cheat with those who are betrayed into its 
support, and it exhibits the worst features of the basest despotism 
in enforcing obedience to its reign of terror. It is but a synonym 
for Disunion by violence, under the pretence of rights reserved to 
States, and must have sprung, like the voluptuous goddess, from froth, 
so little of right, or reason, or justice, or remedy, or good sense, is 
there in it, or around it, or about it ; though, like the contents of her 
mystic girdle, it promised to its votaries a surfeit of hidden pleasures. 
The attempt to liken this wicked and corrupt rebellion to the Ameri- 
can revolution, requires an assurance of brass sufficient to reconstruct 
the Colossus of Ehodes. While the Colonies were petitioning for a 
redress of grievances, war was precipitated upon them by the British 
Crown, to compel their submission and silence. While Congress was 
canvassing the alleged grievances of a portion of the States of the 
Confederacy, and while its legislation upon the subject of the Terri- 
tories was proceeding in harmony with their professed wishes, mem- 
bers representing such aggrieved States withdrew, and precipitated 
Disunion in hot haste, before the result of proposed conciliatory 
efforts could be ascertained, as though they feared if they awaited the 
development of events in progress, they might be more seriously ag- 
grieved by a redress of grievances ! The Colonies had neither sup- 
port nor sympathy, nor representation in any department of the Brit- 
ish Government, but they persevered in their efforts to obtain justice 
and recognition so long as a single ray of hope gave promise, and 
until they were silenced by the presence of British troops, and were 
compelled to submit to slavery and degradation, or appeal to the last 
refuge of an oppressed people — the arbitrament of the battle-field. 
They claimed no false or fabricated reading of the British Constitu- 
tion, which enabled them to sever their connection with the crown, 
and avoid the responsibility of revolution, but they manfully took 
their stand upon the ultima ratio of nations. They received a world's 



TH E U NI O N. 9 

sympathy, because their revolt was an imperious necessity, and Heav- 
en smiled upon their efforts for deliverance and independence. But if 
they had connived at the accession of the selfish, perverse, and bigot- 
ed George to the crown, that they might be able to complain of the 
reigning monarch, and, above all, if they had controlled the ministry, 
and held a majority in Parliament, and had then vacated their seats, 
and yielded up the power to their opponents, and had cried out op- 
pression to cover schemes of political ambition, they would have both 
deserved and received, instead of sympathy, or confidence, or counte- 
nance, the scorn and contempt of Christendom. 

The Declaration of American Independence, the modern Magna 
Charta of human rights, evolved the idea so cheering to the cause of 
Freedom and yet so startling to monarchy, that Governments derived 
their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that although 
Governments long established should not be changed for light and 
transient causes, yet when they become subversive of the ends for 
which they were established, and " when a long train of abuses and 
usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinced the design 
to reduce them under absolute desj^otism^ it was their right, their duty, 
to throw off such Government, and to provide new guards for their 
future security." But it nowhere declares that a knot of conspiring 
politicians, foiled in their schemes of ambition and plunder, and chafing 
under disa]>pointment like a tiger cheated in his foray, may, without 
the popular support or sympathy, but in defiance of both, assert that 
the election of a political opponent whose success they might have 
prevented, is a sufiicient cause of rebellion, or that a party or an 
interest, which has the majority in both branches of the Representative 
Government, and is protected by the opinions of the judiciary of the 
nation, can withdraw, so as to give its opponents the power, and then 
set on foot a rebellion, and seek to destroy an edifice which stands as 
the last best hopes of man, because they fear they may be visited with 
political oppression ! Those who practise such shallow devices before 
the world, in the latter part of the nineteenth century, should remem- 
ber that they but copy the stupid instincts of the bird that buries its 
head in the sand, and then indulges the conceit that its ungainly body 
is concealed also. Whatever causes of disturbance and disaffection 
existed between the North and South, the public judgment has ren- 
dered its verdict upon abundant evidence, and with extraordinary 
unanimity, deciding that such formed a remote and feeble element in 
inducing disunion, but that it was a foregone conclusion with those 
who urged it forward, darkly designed and deliberately determined, 
for the purpose of securing personal eclat and self-aggrandizement, 
1^ 



10 THE UNION. 

rather tlian that of securing rights and privileges to an oppressed sec- 
tion of people. 

"Order is Heaven's first law." 

— it is coeval with being. No people, civilized or savage, ever existed 
without a government for their guidance and regulation. Beasts of 
the field and forest, birds of the air, fishes of the sea, and insects which 
inhabit all, form their colonies and associations, and arrange them- 
selves in obedience to some recognized rule, and even inanimate 
objects obey with unerring certainty the hand which guides them. 
Nor do the lights of history, the lessons of experience, or the flicker- 
ing shadows of tradition, tell of a Government which voluntarily and 
by design planted the seeds of its own decay in its bosom, or provided 
for its own destruction and overthrow, by committing its life and 
destiny to other hands: The Constitution forming the Union and 
erecting its Government was the emanation of the i^ople of the United 
States. It was adopted,. as declared in its preamble, "to form a more 
perfect union, to establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide 
for the common defence, to promote the general welfare, and to secure 
the blessings of liberty to the people who ordained it, and their pos- 
terity." But if the instrument which formed the more perfect Union 
with becoming solemnity contemplated its dismemberment and over- 
throw by the withdrawal of all or any of the States therefrom at the 
pleasure of their capricious politicians, it remained a most imperfect 
and pitiable Union still. If the justice it established was but tempo- 
rary, if the domestic tranquillity it insured was for the time being, if 
the common defence it provided for was until some of the States 
should withdraw from the Union and make war upon it, and if the 
blessings of liberty it secured to posterity were upon condition that 
those who secured them should not wish to subvert the liberty thus 
secured by armed force, then, our boasted Constitution, which has 
been hailed throughout the earth as one of the wisest emanations of 
man, and enjoys a world-wide fame for its humane provisions and 
lofty conceptions of statesmanship, should be scouted as a fraud, a 
delusion, and an imposture, possessing much more sound than sub- 
stance, and carrying by design, in its own bosom, the seeds of its 
dissolution. But no sentence, or word, or syllable, can be found in the 
Federal Constitution sustaining an idea at once so puerile and mon- 
strous. It provides for the admission to the Union of new States, but 
not the withdrawal therefrom of those already members. To gain 
such admission the States must apply to Congress, with a constitution 
Republican in form ; and upon an act of Congress authorizing such 
admission, duly approved and signed 1 y the President of the United 



THE UNION. 11 

States, such State becomes a member of the Confederacy. If one 
State, being thus admitted, can withdraw at pleasure, by passing an 
act or ordinance of Secession, and cancel a solemn covenant by one 
party alone, which it required two to make, and in which both remain 
interested, any or all may do the same, and the rich harvest of liberty 
and its attending blessings, which our forefathers professed to secure 
to posterity, may prove a barren and a blasted field, when those for 
whom it was designed prepare to reap their inheritance. 

It is a familiar principle of law that a repealing statute, itself 
repealed, revives and puts in force the former law. So long, then, as 
Congress permits its several acts for the admission of the revolted 
States to the Union to stand, according to Secession law and logic, 
these States can go out and in at pleasure, and if they may withdraw 
by an ordinance of their own, by the same rule Congress may expel 
them by repealing its acts of admission. To go out of the Union as 
they insist, they have only to pass an act or ordinance of Secession 
without the knowledge, privity, or consent of the Government of the 
Union. To return, they would have only to repeal it. They can 
then go out when it suits principle, and return when it favors interest; 
or they can alternate, like migratory birds with the seasons, hatching 
Disunion in the Confederacy and rearing it without, and as thus far 
its managers have, in most instances, generously relieved the people 
of participation in the matter, the destruction of old governments and 
the erection of new ones would occasion little inconvenience. 
»> Jove, according to mythology, and that is an authority not easily 
refuted', leaped fully armed from the brain of the goddess ; but stranger 
still, the founders of the Government of the Southern Confederacy 
leaped fully armed with high sounding titles of official station from 
their own, and brought their Government with them ; an emanation 
neither suggested nor approved by the popular voice, but the creation 
of those who, like the renowned Peter Brush, wanted "something to 
have rather than something to do," and almost universally repudiated 
wherever opportunity has been afforded. A Government purportmg 
to be of the people, without permitting them to have a voice in con- 
structing it; without a "local habitation" of departments in the 
abstract, and offices with more titles than duties ; a President without 
an election, a Treasury without money or sources of revenue, a Navy 
without ships, a Post-office without mails, a Minister of foreign rela- 
tions whose relati(ms abroad decline to acknowledge the connection, 
a Department of the Interior representing a nature-abhorred vacuum, 
an Attorney-General without law, and a Patent-Office which, in the 
absence of other business, should issue letters securing the exclusive 



12 THEUNION. 

right of this new-fledged Confederacy to those who invented it, for its 
extraordinary novelty rather than its acknowledged utility ; that it 
may be preserved to after times in the world's curiosity shop, with 
Law's scheme of banking, the moon-hoax of Locke, the messages of 
the President and Queen over the submarine telegraph, and Kedheif- 
fer's perpetual motion. 

The advocates of the right of Secession, in claiming that a State after 
its solemn admission, and while enjoying the protection and partici- 
pating in the fruits of the Union, may at its pleasure, and by its own 
act, secede, to be consistent, should hold that a nation may at pleasure 
withdraw from its treaty obligations without previous provision or 
consent of the other side ; that one who has conveyed an estate and 
received the consideration, may resume it when it suits his neces- 
sity or convenience, that the husband or wife may repudiate the 
marriage obligation without detriment, or a disregard of marital faith, 
and in short, that a covenant made by two parties, and in which both 
are interested, may be cancelled by one. 

The right thus to secede must rest upon a political free love, where 
States, unequally united, may, on discovering their true .affinities, 
dissolve the first condition and become sealed in confederate wedlock 
to their chosen companions during pleasure, and the authors of the 
discovery should go down to posterity as the Brigham Youngs of 
modern confederacies. 

Most events of modern times find their parallel in early history, and 
this attempt to extemporize a government upon the elements of politi- 
cal disquietude, so that, like sets of dollar jewelry, every person can 
have one of his own, does not form an exceptional case. When David 
swayed the sceptre of Judea, the comely Absalom, a bright star of the 
morning, whose moral was obscured by his intellectual light, finding 
such amusements as the slaying of his brother and burning the barley 
fields of Joab too tame for his ambition, conceived the patriotic idea 
of driving his father from the throne, of usurping the regal authority, 
and relieving the people unasked from the oppressions under which he 
had discovered they were groaning. Like modern demagogues he 
commenced with disaffection, advised all who came with complaints 
that, from royal inattention, no one was deputed to hear them, and in 
greeting those who passed the king's gate with a kiss, that he might 
steal away their hearts, he lamented that he was not a judge in the 
land, so that any one who had a cause or suit, might come to him, and 
he would do him justice. Under pretence of going to Hebron, the 
royal residence in the early reign of David, to pay his vows, for he was 
conscientious in the matter of vows as Herod, he raised a rebellious 



THE UNION. 13 

army, and sent spies through the land to proclaim him king and reign- 
ing in Hebron, when the trumpet should sound upon the air. The 
conspiracy, says sacred history, was strong, and the rebellion was so 
artfully contrived, so stealthily inaugurated, that it gave high promise 
of success. The king, although in obedience to the stern dictates of 
duty, he sent forth his armies by hundreds and by thousands to assert 
and maintain his prerogative, exhibited the heart of a good prince 
and an aflfectionate father, in beseeching them for his sake, to deal gently 
with the young man, even Absalom ; and when the conHict was over, 
the first inquiry with anxious solicitude, was, is the young man safe ? 
And yet this ambitious rebel, in raising a numerous and powerful army, 
and endeavoring to wrest the government from the rightful monarch, 
would doubtless have claimed, according to modern acceptation, that 
he was acting from high convictions of duty, from a powerful necessity, 
and fighting purely in self-defence. And when the great battle was set 
in array in the wood of Ephraim, where twenty thousand were slaugh- 
tered, and the wood devoured that day more than the sword devour- 
ed, there was evidently nothing that he so much desired, when he saw 
exposure and overthrow inevitable, as to be let alone. But that short 
struggle subdued the aspirations, and closed forever the ignoble career 
of this ambitious leader in Israel — a warning to those who would be- 
come judges before their time, or be made kings upon the sound of a 
trumpet, blown by their own directions. Let all such remember the 
wood of Ephraim, the wide-spreading branches of the oak, the painful 
suspense which came over the author of the rebellion, the darts of Joab, 
and the dark pit into which this prince of the royal household was 
cast for his folly, his madness, and treachery. 

And when those charged with the administration of our government 
send forth its armies by hundreds and by thousands to maintain and 
vindicate the Constitution and Union of our fathers, may they imitate 
the example of the wise king of Judea, and beseech the captains of 
. «.,the hosts to deal gently with the young Absalom of Secession, and by 
■'f^ all means inquire for their safety when their armies have been com- 
pletely routed, and the rebellion put down forever. 

Secession, either peaceable or violent, if crowned with complete suc- 
cess, can furnish no remedy for sectional grievances, real or imaginary. 
It would be as destructive of Southern as of Northern interests, for 
both are alike concerned in the maintenance and prosperity of the 
Union. It would increase every evil, aggravate every cause of dis- 
turbance, and render every acute complaint hopelessly chronic. Look 
at miserable, misguided, misgoverned Mexico, and receive a lesson of 
instruction. She has been seceding, and dividing, and pronouncing. 



14 THE UNION. 

and fighting for her rights, and in the self-defence of aggressive lead- 
ers, from the daj of her nominal independence, and she has reaped 
an abundant harvest of degradation and shame. No President of the 
Kepublic has ever served the full term for which he was elected, and 
generally, had his successor had more fitness than himself, it would 
have occasioned no detriment. When the population of the United 
States was three millions that of Mexico was five, and when that of 
the United States is thirty, the population of Mexico is only eight ; and 
while the United States has gained the highest rank among the nations 
of the earth, by common consent, Mexico has descended to the lowest. 
Her people have been the dupes and slaves and footballs of aspiring 
leaders, mad with a reckless and mean ambition, inflated with self- 
importance and conceit, and destitute of patriotism or statesmanship. 
But as a clown with a pick-axe can demolish the choicest productions 
of art, so can the demagogue overthrow the loftiest institutions of 
wisdom. 

Thus has poor, despised, dwarfed, and down-trodden Mexico been 
crushed forever, under the iron heel of her own insane despoilers ; a 
memorable but melancholy illustration of a people without a fixed and 
stable government; the sport of the profligate and designing, the vic- 
tims of fraud and violence. 

Southern States along the free border had felt most seriously, all the 
injury and irritation produced by inharmonious and conflicting rela- 
tions between them and their brethren of the North, and yet the peo- 
ple of these States shrunk from the remedy of secession as from the 
bottomless pit. They saw in it nothing but swift and hopeless de- 
struction, and believed that the desire for disunion had originated more 
in ultra-ambitious schemes than in a determination to protisct their 
peculiar system of domestic servitude from encroachment. But States 
with which the heresy originated, and had been cherished, had long 
revelled in dreamy theories and vague notions of benefits which would 
flow to them from a dissevered Union, and madly hastened to destroy 
the fabric of their fathers before it could be rescued. The most sordid 
passions of man, seeking indulgence of their appetites in the promised 
land of secession, lent their absorbing stimulants to urge forward the 
catastrophe. Avarice clanked her chains for the necessitous and mer- 
cenary, and fortunes sprung up unbidden, on either hand, to greet 
them, seeking masters and service. Ports and harbors, and marts and 
entrepots rushed in upon a heated imagination, as they heard in the 
distance the knell of the Union tolHng ; they beckoned, and the con- 
tributions of a world's commerce were poured into their lap by direct 
trade, and universal expansion came over all the votaries of disunion, 



THEUNION. 15 

as if by magic. " The tliree-hooped pot had ten hoops," and what 
was " Greek creek once was Tiber now." Mammon erected his court, 
and they heard the clinking of gold in the world's exchequer, as it ac- 
cumulated at the counters of their exchange. Ambition kindled her 
torch, which, like the bush of Horeb, burned and was not consumed, 
and rank, and place, and station, and stars and garters, and the gew- 
gaw trappings of nobility were showered in promiscuous profusion ; 
wreaths of laurel adorned the brows of the brave, and the devotees of 
pleasure danced at the music of secession sackbut and psaltry and harp, 
"and all went merry as a marriage bell." Though sectional feeling 
had, after many years of profitless conflict, culminated, and the wise 
and union-loving were engaged in restoring friendly relations, under 
circumstances more favorable to success than thirty years of struggles 
had furnished, and though Congress was organizing the territories 
without restriction upon domestic institutions, yet the time for dis- 
union, so long invoked, had come, and one State, so far as in her 
power, sundered the bonds that made her a member of the Union be- 
fore the result of the Presidential election had been declared by Con- 
gress. They turned their backs upon friends and sympathizers, de- 
nounced laggards in the cause, declared their repudiation of the Con- 
stitution, and applied the torch to the temple of free government and 
the Union, with as little solemnity as they would have repealed an act 
of legislation. The property of the United States, by sea and by land, 
was seized, and the government was defied and menaced by armed 
forces, and avowed preparation for war ; other States followed, in 
form, if not in substance, by the action of politicians if not people — 
some half willing, others more than half forced — those who should 
have stood with sleepless zeal upon the ramparts of the Constitution, 
ingloriously surrendered their posts, and the reign of anarchy was 
thus inaugurated in our own happy land. 

All tliis increased, and seriously too, the embarrassment which sur- 
rounded the question. But still the spirit of the times, the voice of 
the people in every section. South as well as North, demanded peace — 
that abstractions should be laid aside, that every substantial cause of 
grievance should be redressed, and that tlje interests of a great and 
prosperous nation should not be disturbed, nor the moral sense of the 
world shocked by a conflict of arms among brethren. There was yet 
hope that the cup of intestine war might, in mercy, be permitted to 
pass. The report of the first hostile gun which was discharged, how- 
ever, proclaimed to the world that all chances of peaceful adjustment 
were over; that "heaven in anger for a dreadful moment, had suffered 
hell to take the reins" — tliat Pandora's box was opened again, and the 



16 THE UNION. 

deadliest plagues known to earth let loose to curse it : but like that 
repository of evils, hope yet smiled at the bottom. Argument and 
opinion were thrust aside for violence and blood with deliberate prep- 
aration. Is it strange that the natural elements sympathized with 
the occasion, as the intelligence flashed through the land ? A sheet of 
Cimmerian darkness, near midnight, hung like a death-pall over the 
earth — the winds moaned heavily, like the wail of spirits lost — doors 
creaked and windows clattered, driving currents and counter-currents 
of sleet and rain descended like roaring cataracts ; but the hoarse and 
startling shriek of the New York newsboy rose above all with the ap- 
palling cry, "The bombardment of Fort Sumter!" and 

" Gave signs of woe 
That all was lost." 

The blood-fiend laughed loud ; the evil genius of humanity clapped 
his hands in triumph ; monarchy "grinned horribly a ghastly smile," 
but liberty, bathed in tears, was bowed in shame, for the madness of 
her degenerate children. 

The first flash of artillery kindled anew a flame of patriotic devotion 
to country, which will burn with a pure and constant glow, when the 
lamp of mortal existence shall pale and flicker in death. Its first re- 
verberations upon the air, aroused a slumbering love of Constitution 
and of Union, and of the cherished emblem of all, the stars and 
stripes, which will not again seek repose until the roar of hostile guns 
shall be silenced. It startled to their feet, as if by a common impulse, 
twenty millions of freemen, to guard tlie citadel of their faith from 
destruction, as war was driving his ebon car upon his remorseless 
mission. 

This civil intestine ^^'ar is one of the most fearful and ferocious that 
ever desolated the earth, and its authors will be cursed, when the 
atrocities of Bajazet and Tamerlane, and the Khans of Tartary and 
India, and other despoilers of the earth shall be forgotten. It is a war 
between and among brethren. Those whose eyes should have beamed 
in friendship, now gleam in war ; those who close in the death strug- 
gle upon the battle-field, were children of the same household and 
nurtured at the same gathering-place of affection ; baptized at the 
same font, and confirmed at the same chancel : 

" They grew in beauty side by side, 
They filled one house with glee ; 
* * * 

Whose voices mingled as they prayed 
Round the same parent knee." 

But, while we express deep humiliation for the depravity of our 



THE UNION. 



17 



kind, and are shocked and sickened at a spectacle so revolting, we 
should not abandon the dear old mansion to the flames, even though 
kindled by brethren, who should have watched over it with us, and 
guarded it from harm. And, while we should not raise our hand to 
shed a brother's blood, we may turn aside his insane blow, aimed at the 
heart of the venerated mother of all. And, if a great power of Eu- 
rope is disposed to sympathize with rebellion, and believes this Gov- 
ernment and this people can be driven, by the menace of foreign and 
domestic forces combined, to avoid the curses of war, let her try the 
experiment. But when they come, to save time and travel, let them 
bring with them a duly-executed quit-claim to the Union, for such 
portions of the North American continent as they have not surren- 
dered to it in former conflicts, for they will have occasion for just 
such an instrument, whenever their impertinent interference is mani- 
fested practically in our domestic aflTairs, 

Conspicuous in this strange passage of the new world's history is 
the secession of Texas. A state with extended territories, and the 
right to form four more States from them without restriction, south 
of the old Missouri line— a State requiring the protection of the Fed- 
eral Government to guard it from marauding savages and other hos- 
tile bands— a State which was never wronged by a Northern State, 
nor by the Government of the Union, in theory or in practice. This 
State was the last Southern State gathered under the flag of the 
Union— admitted in 1845, more as a Southern than a Northern meas- 
ure ; admitted, too, under peculiar circumstances, after a most memo- 
rable struggle, and in the highest branch of the National Legislature 
by a single vote. 

'■■' Sir Jolin of Hynford, 'twas my blade 
That knighthood on thy shoulder laid ; 
For this good deed, permit me then, 
A word to these misguided men." 

Not those who would seek to maintain, but those who labor to de- 
stroy the Union, you have widely mistaken both the temper and the 
purpose of the great body of people of the Free States in the present 
crisis. In this unnatural struggle, which your leaders have forced 
upon them, they seek only to uphold and maintain, and preserve from 
destruction, a Government which is a common inheritance, and in the 
preservation of which you are equally interested. They seek not to 
despoil your States, not to disturb your internal relations, but to pre- 
serve the Union which shelters and protects all, and vindicate the Con- 
stitution, which is especially your only defence from aggression— is both 
your sword and shield. They war not upon your peculiar system of 



18 THE UNION. 

domestic servitude, nor will they ; but they admonish you in a spirit 
of kindness, that during this brief struggle, its friends and advocates 
have been its worst enemies, and have furnished arguments against 
it which will weaken its foundations, when the denunciations of its 
most persistent Anti-Slavery foes are forgotten forever. You arraign 
the people of the Free States for rallying around the Government of 
the Union, of which a few months since you were members, and sus- 
tained it yourselves, and which, at the time of your alleged secession, 
had experienced no change beyond one of political administrations. 
You rebuke those who stood with you through good and evil report, 
in defence of the Constitution, and all its guaranties, in its dark days 
of trial when menaced only by opinion, for sustaining it now, when it 
is assailed by armed forces, and insist that after having defended that 
sacred instrument so long and so faithfully, they are bound now to 
assist in its overthrow ! — a system of law, logic and morality, peculiar 
to disunion ethics alone. You repudiate the Constitution with no 
sufficient cause of revolution, for all the alleged causes of grievance 
as stated were insufficient to justify it, and proclaimed a dissolution 
of the Union, defied and dishonored its flag, and menaced the Gov- 
ernment by denouncing actual war. You seized by violence its for- 
tresses, armories, ships, mints, custom-houses, navy-yards, and other 
property, to which you had not even a pretence of right, and threat- 
ened to take possession of the National Capital. You bombarded 
Fort Sumter, a fortress of the United States, garrisoned as a peace 
establishment only, and in a state of starvation, from batteries which 
the Government of the United States, in its extreme desire for peace, 
permitted you to erect for that purpose, under the guns of the same 
fortification, a proceeding unheard of before, and never to be repeated 
hereafter, — bombarded it too, because the flag of the Union, which 
your fathers and yourselves had fought under with us the battles of 
the Constitution — a flag which a few days previously you had hailed 
with pride — because the stars and stripes, the joy of every American 
heart, full of glowing historic and lofty recollections, was floating 
over it, according to the custom of every nation and people under 
heaven, w^as hateful in your sight ! The Athenians were tired of 
hearing their great leader called the Just, and consigned him to ban- 
ishment. You were annoyed at the sight of the noblest national em- 
blem which floats under the sun, wlien unfurled, whereby our consent, 
and for a consideration too, the Government of the United States held 
exclusive jurisdiction, and where it properly belonged, and for this you 
commenced a war promising to be more ferocious and exterminating 
throughout the Republic, than was the atrocious decree of Herod in a 



THE UNION. 19 

single village. Sumter was not erected for the exclusive defence of 
the harbor of Charleston, but for the purpose of preventing a foreign 
enemy from making a lodgment there, and from that point levying 
successful maritime war upon New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Bal- 
timore, New Orleans, and other towns and cities. And the unfriendly 
relations, which sprung up between the Southern States and the Gov- 
ernment of the Union, made its retention and occupation more neces- 
sary than befoi'e. 

You will not consent that the General Government, the government 
of the whole people, should march forces over the " sacred soil of a 
State" of the Confederacy, to maintain its own dignity and authority, 
to check rebellion, and save the capital from conflagration and its 
archives from destruction; but you should stand admonished that 
there is no soil sufficiently sacred under the broad tegis of the Consti- 
tution, to shelter armed rebellion or secret treason ; and that the Gov- 
ernment of the United States has not only full right and lawful au- 
thority to march its forces over every inch of territory between the 
St. Lawrence and the Pacific to stop the progress of enemies, foreign 
or domestic ; to put down rebellion, or to arrest those who despoil its 
property, or resist the execution of its laws ; but that it is its first and 
most solemn duty to do so. Should the General Government enter a 
State for the purpose of interference with its domestic policy, it would 
be usurpation, and an unwarrantable invasion — a neglect to employ 
its power to enforce its constitutional prerogative would be a culpable 
disregard of official obligation. You propose to defend your home- 
hearths, your firesides, your porches, your altars, your wives and your 
children, your household gods; and these resolves sound well indeed, 
even in the abstract ; but practically the defence will be in time when 
they are assailed, or at least threatened. And you may rest with the 
assurance, that when either of these sacred and cherished interests 
shall be desecrated, or placed in danger or in jeopardy from any Van- 
dal spirit upon the globe, you shall not defend them alone ; for an 
army from the Free States, mightier than that which rose up to crush 
your rebellion, "aye, a great multitude, which no man can number," 
will defend them for you. But the issue must not be changed or frit- 
tered away. Sumter was not your home-hearth, Pickens your fire- 
side. Harper's Ferry your porch, the navy-yards your altars, the cus- 
tom-houses, and post-offices, and revenue-cutters your wives and 
children, nor the mints your household gods. The Government has 
no right to desecrate your homes, nor have you the right to seize 
upon and appropriate to yourselves, under any name however specious, 
what is not your own, but the property of the whole people of the 



20 THE UNION. 

United States ; not of those in array against it as enemies, defying its 
laws, but those who acknowledge and defer to its authority. 

You desire peace! Then lay down your arms and you will have it. 
It was peace when you took them up, it will be peace when you 
lay them down. It will be peace when you abandon war and return 
to your accustomed pursuits. Honorable, enduring, pacific relations 
will be found in complete obedience to the provisions of the Constitu- 
tion, and not in its violation or destruction. The Government is 
sustained by the people, not for the purpose of coercing States in their 
domestic policy, not for the purpose of crushing members of the Con- 
federacy because they fail to conform to a Federal standard, not for 
the purpose of despoiling their people, and least of all, not for the 
purpose of disturbing, or in any degree interfering with the system of 
Southern servitude ; but for the sole and only purpose of putting down 
an unholy armed rebellion, which has defied the authority of the 
Government and seeks its destruction, and in this their determination 
is taken with a resolution, compared with which the edicts of the 
Medes and Persians were yielding and temporary. When the Govern- 
ment of our fathers shall be again recognized, when the Constitution 
and the laws, to which every citizen owes allegiance, shall be observed 
and obeyed ; then will the armies of the Constitution and the Union 
disband, by a common impulse, in obedience to a unanimous popular 
will. And should the present or any succeeding Administration 
attempt to employ the authorities of the Government and people to 
coerce States, or mould their internal afiairs in derogation of the Con- 
stitution, the same array of armed forces would again take the field, 
but it would be to arrest Federal assumption and usurpation and 
protect the domestic rights of States. War is emphatically, and more 
especially a war between brethren, a disgrace to civilization — and any 
war is a drain upon the life-blood of a nation, and originates in wrong. 
Evil spirits give power to evil men for its inauguration, that amid 
conflicts of blood they may cast all roaring down to the dark regions, 
where the waves of oblivion will close over them. Its evils cannot be 
written, even in human blood. It sweeps our race from the earth, as 
if Heaven had repented the making of man. It lays its skinny hand 
upon society, and leaves it deformed by wretchedness and black with 
gore. It marches on its mission of destruction through a red sea of 
blood, and tinges the fruits of earth with a sanguine hue, as the mul- 
berry reddened in sympathy with the romantic fate of the devoted 
lovers. It "spoils the dance of youthful blood," and writes sorrow 
and grief prematurely upon the glad brow of childhood. It chills the 
heart and hope of youth. It drinks the life current of early manhood, 



THE UNION. 91 

and brings down the gray hairs of the aged with sorrow to the grrve. 
It weaves the widow's weeds with the bridal wreath, and our land, 
like Rama, is filled with wailing and lamentation. It lights up the 
darkness with the flames of happy homes. It consumes, like the 
locusts of Egypt, every living thing in its pathway. It wrecks for- 
tunes, brings bankruptcy and repudiation, and blasts the fields of the 
husbandman — it depopulates towns, and leaves cities a modern Her- 
culaneum. It desolates the fireside, and covers the family dwelling 
with gloom, and an awful vacancy rests, where, like the haunted 
mansion, 

"No human figure stirred to go or come, 

No face looked forth from open shut or casement, 
No chimney smoked ; there was no sign of home, 
From parapet to basement. 

"No dog was on the threshold, great or small, 
No pigeon on the roof, no household creature, 
No cat demurely dozing on the wall. 
Not one domestic feature." 

It loads the people with debt, to pass down from one generation to 
another, like the curse of original sin ; upon its merciless errand of 
violence, it fills the land with crime and tumult and rapine, and it 
"gluts the grave with untimely victims, and peoples the world of 
perdition." In the straggles of its death throes, it heaves the moral 
elements with convulsions, and leaves few traces of utility behind it 
to mitigate its curse, and he who inaugurates it, like the ferocious 
Hun, should be denominated the scourge of God, and when his day of 
reckoning shall come, he will call upon the rocks and mountains to 
hide him from popular indignation. But with all its attending evils, 
such a Union cannot be yielded to its demands, nor to avoid its terrors, 
even though, like the Republic of France, we may exchange for a time 
"liberty, equality, and fraternity," for infantry, cavalry and artillery. 
Nor are tame and timid measures the guarantors of peace. It is as 
much the nature of faction to be base as of patriotism to be noble ; 
and a divided Union, instead of securing peace, would present con- 
stant occasion for conflict, and be a fruitful source of war. Let the 
rabble cry of divide and crucify go on from the throat of faction, and 
the cold and calculating political Pilates wash their hands and pro- 
claim their innocence, while their souls are stained with guilt and 
crime for urging it forward ; but let the faithful, conscious of their 
integrity, and strong in truth, endure to the end. Yet ruthless as 
is the sway, and devastating as is the course of war, it is not the 
greatest of evils nor the last lesson in humiliation. " Sweet are the 



22 THE UNION. 

uses of adversity." In its current of violence and blood it may purify 
an atmosphere too long surcharged with discontent and corruption, 
and apostasy and treachery and littleness, and prove how poor a 
remedy it is for social grievances. It may correct the dry-rot of 
demoralization in public station, and raise us, as a people, above the 
dead level of a mean and morbid ambition. It may scatter the tribe 
of bloated hangers-on who seek to serve their country that they 
may plunder and betray it ; and above all it may arouse the popular 
mind to a just sense of its responsibility, until it shall select its ser- 
vants with care, and hold them to a faithful discharge of their duties; 
until deficient -morals shall be held questionable, falsehood a social 
fault, violations of truth a disqualification, and bribery a disgrace — 
until integrity shall be a recommendation, and treason and larceny 
crimes. 

Can a Union once dissevered be reconstructed by the arrangement 
of all parties concerned in its formation ? No ! When it is once de- 
stroyed it is destroyed forever. Let those who believe it can be, first 
raise the dead, place the dimpling laugh of childhood upon the lip of 
age, gather up the petals of May-flowers and bind them upon their na- 
tive stems in primeval freshness amid the frosts of December, bring 
back the withered leaves of autumn and breathe into them their early 
luxuriance, and then bring together again the scattered elements of a 
dissevered Union, when the generous spring-time of our Republic has 
passed away, and selfishness and ambition have come upon us with 
their premature frosts and " winter of discontent." 

Shall we then surrender to turbulence and faction, and rebellion, 
and give up the Union with all its elements of good, all its holy mem- 
ories, all its hallowed associations, all its blood-bought history ? 

" No I let the eagle change his phime, 
The leaf its hue, the flower its bloom," 

but do not give up the Union. Preserve it to " flourish in immortal 
youth," until it is dissolved amid the wreck of "matter, and the crash 
of worlds." Let the patriot and statesman stand by it to the last, 
whether assailed by foreign or domestic foes, and if he perishes in the 
conflict, let him fall like Rienzi, the last of the Tribunes, upon the 
same stand where he has preached liberty and equality to his country- 
men. 

Preserve it in the name of the Fathers of the Revolution — preserve 
if for its great elements of good — preserve it in the sacred name of 
liberty — preserve it for the faithful and devoted lovers of the Consti- 
tution in the rebellious States — those who are persecuted for its sup- 



THEUNION. 23 

port, and are dying in its defence. Rebellion can lay down its arms 
to Government — Government cannot surrender to rebellion. 

Give up the Union ? " this fair and fertile plain to batten on that 
moor," Divide the Atlantic, so that its tides shall beat in sections, 
that some spurious Neptune may rule an ocean of his own ! Draw a 
line upon, the sun's disc, that it may cast its beams upon the earth in 
divisions ! Let the moon, like Bottom in the play, show but half its 
face ! Separate the constellation of the Pleiades and sunder the bands 
of Orion ! but retain the Union. 

Give up the Union, with its glorious flag, its stars and stripes, full 
of proud, and pleasing, and honorable recollections, for the spurious 
invention with no antecedents but the history of a violated constitu- 
tion and of lawless ambition ? No ! let us stand by the emblem of our 
fathers. 

"Flag of the free heart's hope and home, 
By angel hands to valor given, 
Thy stars have lit the welkin dome, 
And all thy hues were born in heaven." 

Ask the Christian to exchange the cross, with the cherished mem- 
ories of a Saviour's love, for the crescent of the impostor, or to address 
his prayers to the Juggernaut or Josh, instead of the living and true 
God ! but sustain the emblem our fathers loved and cherished. 

Give up the Union? Never. The Union shall endure, and its 
praises shall be heard when its friends and its foes, those who support 
and those who assail, those who bare their bosoms in its defence, and 
those who aim their daggers at its heart, shall all sleep in the dust to- 
gether. Its name shall be heard with veneration amid the roar of 
Pacific's waves, away upon the rivers of the North and East, where 
liberty is divided from monarchy, and be wafted in gentle breezes 
upon the Rio Grande. It shall rustle in the harvest, and wave in the 
standing corn, on the extended prairies of the West, and be heard in 
the bleating folds and lowing herds upon a thousand hills. It shall be 
with those who delve in mines, and shall hum in the manufactories of 
New England, and in the cotton-gins of the South. It shall be pro- 
claimed by the stars and stripes in every sea of earth, as the Ameri- 
can Union, one and indivisible; upon the great thoroughfares wher- 
ever steam drives and engines throb and shriek, its greatness and per- 
petuity shall be hailed with gladness. It shall be lisped in the earliest 
words, and ring in the merry voices of childhood, and swell to heaven 
upon the song of maidens. It shall live in the stern resolve of man- 
hood, and rise to the mercy-seat upon woman's gentle availing prayer. 
Holy men shall invoke its perpetuity at the altars of religion, and it shall 



24 THEUNION. 

be whispered in the last accents of expiring age. Thus shall survive 
and be perpetuated the American Union, and when it shall be pro- 
claimed that time shall be no more, and the curtain shall fall, and the 
good shall be gathered to a more perfect Union still, may the destiny 
of our dear land realize the conception, that 

" Perfumes as of Eden flowed sweetly along. 
And a voice, as of angels, enchantingly sung, 
Columbia, Columbia, to glory arise. 
The Queen of the world, and the child of the skies." 



ELEGANTLY ILLUSTRATED EDITION 

OF 

COOPER'S NOVELS 

EMBELLISHED WITH FIVE HUNDEED ORIGINAL DEA WINGS 

By F. O. C. DARLEY. 



This beautiful Edition of Cooper's Works was commenced February 1st, 
1859, and will be completed in TllIKTY-TWO MONTHS from that date, a 
volume containing a novel complete, being published on the first of each 
month. The volumes are uniform in size and binding, and each contains 
Two ExGRAViXGS ON Steel, and Twelve Sketches on Wood, designed bj 
DARLEY, expressly for this edition, and engraved by the First Artists of 

THE COUKTRT. 

THE SERIES EMBRACES: 

THE Pioneers, Lionel Lincoln, jack tier, 

RED KOVER. the SEA LIONS, THE RED SKINS, 

LAST OP THE MOHICANS, THE WATER -WITCH, THE TWO ADMIRALS, 

THE SPY, HOMEWARD BOUND, THE HEIDENMAUER, 

WYANDOTTE, THE MONIKINS, JIERCEDES OF CASTILE, 

THE BRAVO, HOME AS FOUND, OAK OPENINGS, 

THE PILOT, SATANSTOE, AFLOAT AND ASHORE, 

WEPT OF WISH-TON-WISH, WING AND WING, MILES WALLINGFORD, 

THE HEADSMAiV, THE CHAINBEARER, THE CRATER, 

THE PRAIRIE, THE PATHFINDER, THE WAYS OF THE HOUR, 
PRECAUTION, THE DEERSLAYER. 

The first Fifteen Volumes are issued in the above order; the remainder 
will follow the same arrangement as nearly as possible. As a 

N^^TIOIS'J^L EIS-TERPRISE 

the publication of this edition exceeds, both in magnitude and importance, 
any thing of the kind before undertaken in this country. COOPER has been 
■-ustly ityled 

"THE GEEAT AMEEICAN NOVELIST," 

and the Publishers believe they have not mistaken the tastes of his countj-j 
men in offering them this complete and elegant edition of his Works. 

Publishing by subscription, at $1 50 per volume, for which they will bt 
sent, post-paid, to any address in the United States, under 3,000 miles. Tlie 
work can be obtained from local agents (generally the principal Booksellers) 
ill all the large cities. 

BOOKSELLERS and others desiring an Agency where none has beei 
established, can ascertain terms, &c., by addressing the Publishers. 

JAMES G. GEEGOEY, Publisher, 

(successor to W. a. TOWNSEND a CO.,) 

NO. 46 WALKER STREET, N. Y. 



^^JLTt PUBLICATIOlSrS 



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RUSSELL'S LETTERS FROM THE SOUTH; "Pictures of Southern 
Society, Social, Political, and Military," by "Wm. Howard Eussell, correspondent of 
the London Times. 144 pp. Price 25 cents. 

II. 
THE UNION; an Address, by the Hon. Daniel S. Dickinson. Dehvered 
before the Literary Societies of Amherst College. Price 10 cents. 

IIL 

EVERETT'S ORATION; " The Issues now Before the Country;" an Oration 

by Edward Everett, delivered at the Academy of Music, July 4th. Price 15 cents. 

IV. 

MOTLEY'S LETTER TO THE LONDON TIMES; " The Causes of the 

American Civil War," by John Loturop Motley, LL. D., D. C. L. Price 10 cents. 

V. 
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YL 
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No. 46 WALKER STREET, N. Y. , 



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